First: What evidence is there that is irrefutable, if any, for the existence of the historical Jesus?

Then: There is more historical evidence for the existence of Jesus than any other person who has ever lived.

Another:

I suspect that most of the evidence, to which you refer, is religious documents. There is remarkably almost nothing from historians. That has been attested even by Christians in this thread.

Roger:

Note how under this argument a huge body of first-hand evidence is dismissed by this ad hominem — “the evidence of those who knew him and their friends can be treated as non-existent because it is ‘religious'”.

Another:

For example, Josephus wrote about Jesus including His resurrection. Here is the passage, attributed to Josephus, taken from Book 18 of “Antiquites of the Jews”:

Roger:

There are two passages.

What follows has been pasted without acknowledgement from elsewhere, as if it was the poster’s own opinions. This, needless to say, is not very honest, and is usually done to bully and intimidate.

Previous poster:

For the following reasons, this passage is not regarded by many scholars as genuine, but rather as a Christian interpolation:

(i) Josephus was a devout Jew and he did not adopt Christianity. So how could he speak of Christian ‘truth’ or speak of a man being divine?

Roger:

Scholars do not consider this an argument. The idea as Josephus, the traitor, as a devout Jew, is absurd. At the time he wrote Christianity and Judaism were not so clearly defined as separate in many eyes.

Previous poster:

(ii) Josephus would write a page about a petty robber and pages about a king. If Josephus considered Jesus as important as the passage would suggest, why is he dismissed in a few lines?

Roger:

Because the passage suggests he wasn’t important. This is an amateurish objection. To argue from what Josephus ‘must’ have done — we living 2000 years later — is absurd.

Previous poster:

(iii) The early Church Father Origen, refers to the account of John the Baptist’s life and death, also from “Antiquities of the Jews”, but does not quote any reference to Jesus.

Roger:

This is a cunning misrepresentation. Origen quotes the short passage.

Previous poster:

(iv) The Church Fathers Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria and Origen, were well acquainted with the work of Josephus, but none quoted that passage.

Roger:

I have seen this word-for-word SO many times!

Only Origen displays any knowledge of the second half of Antiquities, and no-one else may ever have seen it (since the two halves circulated separately). There are only 14 references to Josephus at all in the whole 5,000 pages of the ante-nicene fathers.

Previous poster:

(v) It wasn’t before 320 A.D., in “Demonstration of the Gospel”, by Eusebius, that we find any reference to this passage.

Roger:

So? It isn’t until 1500 AD that we find any reference to Hermias.

Previous poster:

(vi) In a debate with Justin Martyr, when Trypho the Jew (c.150) charged Justin of following an empty rumour Justin Martyr did not invoke the TF passage to counter him.

Roger:

1. There is no evidence that Justin knew the passage.

2. Christian writers never use Josephus against Jews, since Josephus was a traitor.

3. Trypho does not deny the existence of Jesus, so what purpose would quoting it serve?

Previous poster:

(vii) Origen even states that Josephus, who wrote about John the Baptist, did not know Jesus as the Messiah (Christ). This is in conflict with the content of the passage.

Roger:

No, Origen says that Josephus did not believe in him as the Christ. That is obvious from Antiquities. The passage merely gives the Roman name, writing as he is for Romans.

Previous poster:

(viii) The passage interrupts an account of the Jewish uprising. When the unrelated passage ends, the account of the uprising continues.

Roger:

The person who wrote this had never read Antiquities. The next passage relates a spicy story about sexual abuse in Rome in the temple of Anubis. This too ‘interrupts the narrative’. In Antiquities the text jumps all over the place.

Previous poster:

(ix) There is very good reason to believe that Eusebius originally had the TF in different location to where it now appears. In the following, Eusebius is actually telling us that it followed Josephus’ account of John the Baptist. “After giving this account of John [which Eusebius had just quoted, word by word, as “found in Antiquities Book XVIII”], in the same part of his work [and NOT two chapters earlier, as the TF is located now!] he [Josephus] goes on to speak as follows of our Saviour… [the TF follows] ” That from From Eusebius’, “History of the Church”. What he is doing is describing a different location for the TF. This suggests that the first place it was inserted didn’t work, so another location needed to be found.

Roger:

Arguments that Eusebius couldn’t edit his book correctly seem of slender relevance to the authenticity of the TF.

Previous poster:

(x) Several 15th century copies of the Josephus’ Jewish war have been found, in which Christian forgers have been hard at work. Material had been added. References were inserted about John the Baptist, Jesus and the apostles. Just as with the TF, the Slavonic Josephus shows how attractive Josephus is to the Christian interpolator and how easy it was to get in there and fool around. Note that just like in this case, with the TF it was the early Church who were the keepers of Josephus’ works. Interestingly, just as with the TF, I have had a staunch TF defender trying to defend the Slavonic Josephus.

Roger:

This is very ignorant. The so-called Old Slavonic Josephus is not a copy of Josephus, but a medieval Russian text called “The three captures of Jerusalem”. For the third part the author based his text mainly on a copy of the Jewish War, but also included the TF, material from John Malalas, the NT and anything else he could find.

Atheists scream ‘liar! liar!” a lot, probably because they lie a lot.

Previous poster:

The wonderful ‘Josephus’ testimony (supposed) is almost certainly a product of Christian tampering.

Roger:

You have offered no evidence of this.

Previous poster:

Now keep in mind that that is usually the first historical evidence that Christians submit to substantiate the historicity of Jesus.

Roger:

Note the ad hominem.

Earlier poster:

Plus various inscriptions on walls, rocks and other artifacts from the 1st century depict Jesus. Only a fool would deny His historical existance.

Previous poster:

Artefacts can inscriptions can be found from ancient Rome and ancient Egypt, showing testimony to their various gods. All that proves is the existence of those religions at the time.

Roger:

Note again how the evidence is ducked.

And that’s it. Evidence was produced; efforts were made to ignore it in order to continue asserting something silly. But that’s atheism for you.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

~~~

And another:

I’d just like to add anyone who believes Josephus wrote about Jesus is a fool. Apart from it being an obvious forgery odigon (?) said Josephus didn’t believe Jesus was the Christ. A good link is:http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/josephus-etal.html

Roger: You have believed too hastily in the nonsense spouted by the ignorant online. Modern scholars are in no doubt that Josephus did refer to Jesus in Ant. 20 — indeed hardly any scholar has ever doubted this — and most consider the passage in Ant. 18 most likely to have genuine elements, but be damaged.

http://josephus.yorku.ca/links-articles.htm (look for Whealey).

All the best,

Roger Pearse

(Reproduced with Roger’s permission)

~~~

Rowland: I don’t claim to be a scholar-of-history (though I majored in the subject for a BA degree), but when studying Ancient History at a secular university 40 years ago this broad question came up, so I did some research on it. I remember going to the major Ancient History texts (like the multi-volume Cambridge Ancient History – I forget the exact title) and was astonished then that the subject ‘Did Jesus Actually Exist?’ wasn’t raised…

Historians are the experts in historiographical matters, eh?

Ditto, (as Roger as said), with the major history departments of the Australian universities I visited non-stop for three years in the early 1970s…

Methinks it would be convenient for some if Jesus hadn’t existed 🙂

—

Shalom! Rowland Croucher

January 2007